There is nothing worse than paying an employee to Loose Business for you!

As crazy as this sounds it happens all the time, I would have to assume without the business owners knowledge. I guarantee at least 90% of my readers employee someone whose performance, behavior, personality, attitude or hygiene is costing them business.

The responsibility lies squarly on the shoulders of leadership. Management must know how its employees are impacting business for practical reasons like evaluations, training, pay raises, bonuses, benchmarking and of course termination.

The surest way to prevent employing someone who is a risk to offend your client base is to perform “on the job” type interviews. Once you get down to your short list of potential new staff - use their services yourself as if you were a client.

If you are hiring a new dog walker or groomer - take your own beloved pet to the potential new hire. Would you pay for her services? Do you feel like your pet is safe with this potential new employee. How comfortable was the dog? Notice if you felt at ease or anxious. Of course evaluate the actual job performance. How detailed was she? Did she check in with you to get feedback on the job as she was working with your dog?

Let some of your most trusted and even some of your toughest clients do the same. How do they rate your potential new employee?

I am writing this article after spending several hundred dollars at one of my favorite spa’s - and walking away completely disillusioned. If I were the kind of customer, like most of your customers, who walks away without complaining - you may never see me again and you would never even know why you lost my business.

If you don’t have a system in place to notice my spending has significantly dropped off you might not even know you’ve lost me as a customer because I might pop in now and again for an occasional quick product or service.

If you had a follow up system in place to elicit my feedback on the service of this new employee you very well might have heard back that I was horrified that the nail technician had dirt under her nails.

As it stands now, five days after my spa service, I am thinking of all the reasons I never want to go back to that spa…and the spa owner has no idea and probably never will.

Start pre-hiring practices as I described above and put systems in place to connect with your clients after their service and at regular intervals. Always monitor your clients monthly spend and track for patterns so that you know immediately if there are irregular spending habits.

These irregularities should be a trigger to contact your client and check for the causes. It may not be a problem with your services or staff. You may find that your clients’ needs have changed and you discover new opportunities to service your clients. Ways the customer might never have imagined and therefor, never looked to you for her pet care needs,

Monitoring your staff has extra benefits to the organization. When you manage under performing employees it shows the entire staff you value quality work. Leaving a poor employee to enjoy the same pay and benefits as your best employees de-values the great employees.

Manage your new hires as if you were the toughest client this employee would face. If you don’t, you may be paying your new staff to drive away business!

Would you be interested in learning a clever marketing strategy you can use month after month that consistently brings in new clients without loosing a single dollar in profit from your existing clients?

How many “incentives” have you used before that can make that claim? Most “event” marketing has the unfortunate side effect of forcing Dog Business Owners to loose margin from their existing clients. Very rarely do you find a strategy that allows you to retain margin on existing clients while at the same time growing your new sales.

Offering a sale of any type is simply a risky profit proposition if not handled properly and one of the most common mistakes we see pet care business owners making.

The strategy we are going to discuss here is guaranteed to grow new business while maintaining existing margins - without any ill will or potential for disgruntled customers.

Pet Care Businesses offer services and products that are absolutely perfect for what I call “event” marketing strategy.

When you think of event marketing most people think of major holiday sales and promotions. The pet care business is extremely busy during holidays, especially pet sitters and doggy day cares. But this is not what we are talking about.

Remember, our “event” marketing strategy grows new business and retains existing margins. Almost all holiday promotions and sales result in discounting services and products to existing customers. Although we do realize it is a prime time for gaining new clients - and we are not discounting this strategy - it is not what we are talking about in this article.

Did I mention that this same strategy can set your entire annual marketing campaign on auto pilot?

Enough suspense already, here it is:

Creative, innovative event marketing to associations, groups, organizations, forums….tribes.

Every major career, industry, business segment and niche has their own holiday, their conventions, trade shows and meetings.

Let’s just talk about holiday event marketing.

For example, the first week of May was Nurse’s Week. To celebrate nurses week you could have created a promotion for pampering the beloved dogs of your communities nurses. How easy would it be to target nurses in your community?

If you are whining that I am giving you an example of something you can’t use again until next year…how about this one: the third week in May is National Police Week. Our communities protectors and crime fighters…what could you do to serve them for a change?

How about partnering with a child care professional (or just dragging along your best friend or best employee) and offer a police officer night out package. Kind of a “more than 2 for 1″ offer - you sit the dog and the kids for less than it would cost them for a baby sitter. Make the dog sitting special - add a fitness/exercise component so officer mommy and daddy come home to a well behaved, tired dog and kid!

Why not? How much good will can you afford? How many new clients do you think you will get from within the police community? How about the referrals - heck, they know everyone in town.

Do you think an officer who hasn’t had a real night out in weeks or maybe months isn’t going to want to give back to the business that gave him/her time alone with their spouse?

It is just one idea - any idea you come up with just needs to be serving your client’s needs first. You will always get back when you give. When you are marketing creatively like this - you won’t have any competition.

This is “event” marketing 101 - I’ve got a lot more ideas but you are going to have to wait to read my book, “How To Recession Proof Your Dog Business” when it comes out in a few weeks.

I believe in business at least 90% of our success is based on our self image.  That is why I founded The Human Potential Centre and why we have developed a scholarship program.  To see details and how to apply for our current Cruise scholarship program please visit: http://humanpotentialscholarship.org

***Time is almost out to apply - please visit now while you are thinking about it.